Solving the For Profit problem

[cschwab]

I'm not going to hide what I feel is the big cure for health care, the silver bullet, the holy grail: HR676, a bill that I sincerely believe would not only solve most of our problems with health insurance but would take out the for-profit motive of such things as dialysis companies.

I've got more about it on our front pages:  click_for_Silver_Bullet_article

It doesn't look like HR676 is going to become a political reality any time soon, so maybe we should start talking about at least starting a bill that would have the section of the bill which would turn the for-profits into non-profits?

At this stage, I'm just bouncing around the idea but I wanted to see what others thought.

[Sandman]

That article does not explain very much.  Like for example, if that bill were to get passed, what kind of health care would we be able to expect?  If insurance becomes mandatory, what would insurance cost?  What about the cost of medications and out of hospital apparatus?  And so on ans so on.

So many questions and not enough answers.

[cschwab]

Sandman,

From what I understand, if this bill were to pass we would have a "Medicare for all" single-payer type system and the insurance companies would be eliminated.  We would pay more for taxes, but it would be more than made up for with the elimination of health insurance premiums.

Medicare is actually more efficient at deliverying health care than the private insurance companies.  I'll have to dig up the stats I saw on that.

I can't recall seeing some of the details you are asking about.  But Physicians for a National Health Program does have some answers for a lot of FAQs:
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-faq

Frontline also put out an excellent program on health care in 5 capitalist countries.  This bill would probably bring about a system most like Taiwan's:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/

Sounds like I ought to be adding more to that article.

Thanks for the feedback,
Chris
 

[angieskidney]

From what I understand, if this bill were to pass we would have a "Medicare for all" single-payer type system and the insurance companies would be eliminated.  We would pay more for taxes, but it would be more than made up for with the elimination of health insurance premiums.
 

Hmm... sounds like how Canada is except even though we have that type of system, it actually never did eliminate insurance companies. It just made them cheaper as people are not dependent on them.

[cschwab]

I guess it is supplemental insurance in Canada?  Anyway, I did find the stats on what the private insurance companies are raking in:

"PNHP Co-founders Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein published this definitive study of the administrative costs of the U.S. health system in the August 21, 2003 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. After analyzing the costs of insurers, employers, doctors, hospitals, nursing homes and home-care agencies in both the U.S. and Canada, they found that administration consumes 31.0 percent of U.S. health spending, double the proportion of Canada (16.7 percent). Average overhead among private U.S. insurers was 11.7 percent, compared with 1.3 percent for Canada

[angieskidney]

Oh wow!! Thx for that info!

[cschwab]

Sandman,

I did do some rewriting on the Silver_Bullet article.  See what you think now!  I definitely did need a better intro to the bill.  I also changed the link I had in the article for health insurance; it now points to a list of links to articles about the evils of private health insurance: Case_against_private_health_insurance.

Chris

[Sandman]

Thanks Chris.